Chinatown

In this significant scholarly contribution to the study of ethnic minorities, Chalsa Loo documents a distinctive American community--Chinatown, San Francisco. Based on an interview survey of residents of Chinatown, Loo's study tests prevailing psychological and sociological theories, and ultimately dispels stereotypes about Asian Americans, replacing them with empirically derived realities of American life. Chinatown: Most Time, Hard Time comprehensively covers a range of significant areas of life, integrating several disciplines and combining the rigor of scientific analysis with the richness of individual experience through the use of photographs and personal vignettes.

This valuable analysis serves as a model of comprehensive, quantitative multidomain interview sample survey research. It provides data on the major domains of life for all Americans, but particularly for ethnic Americans: neighborhood, crowding, health, mental health, employment, language and cultural barriers, quality of life, and differences between men and women. This book is scholarly yet readable, and will be particularly useful to social scientists, educators, researchers, human service professionals, and policy planners.

CHALSA M. LOO is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Clinical Psychologist at the Veterans Administration in Honolulu. She has also been Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Visiting Associate Professor at the Asian American Studies Research Center at UCLA. She has published widely on ethnic and mental health issues--publishing over 30 professional articles. Dr. Loo was the principal investigator for the research grant that funded this Chinatown study and was founder of the Chinatown Housing and Health Research Project. She was the 1991 recipient of the Distinguished Contribution Award presented by the Asian American Psychological Association.